Births on February 2

Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, Italian-Spanish historian and author (d. 1526)

Peter Martyr d'Anghiera (Latin: Petrus Martyr Anglerius or ab Angleria; Italian: Pietro Martire d'Anghiera; Spanish: Pedro Mártir de Anglería; 2 February 1457 – October 1526), formerly known in English as Peter Martyr of Angleria, was an Italian historian at the service of Spain during the Age of Exploration. He wrote the first accounts of explorations in Central and South America in a series of letters and reports, grouped in the original Latin publications of 1511 to 1530 into sets of ten chapters called "decades." His Decades are of great value in the history of geography and discovery. His De Orbe Novo (On the New World, 1530) describes the first contacts of Europeans and Native Americans, Native American civilizations in the Caribbean and North America, as well as Mesoamerica, and includes, for example, the first European reference to India rubber. It was first translated into English in 1555, and in a fuller version in 1912.